Item 3A - Minutes Approval - Laserfiche WebLink

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City Manager Taylor suggested that councilors hold him responsible for any deficiency in City services or performance. Time Management/Meeting Agendas City Manager Taylor asked for feedback on whether the council should take action on any items on the agenda for the regular meeting if there was time available at the end of the work session. Ms. Taylor did not support the suggestion. Ms. Bettman stated she was not opposed to the suggestion, but the council should select an item that was not controversial and all regular meeting agendas should include the caveat that action could be taken on an item during the work session. She said she was opposed to any public hearing items being considered during a work session. Mr. Kelly said he like the idea of flexibility, but that every item on an agenda could be potentially controversial or of interest to someone. He suggested that staff develop a protocol to discuss at the next process session and that the council might consider requiring a super majority in order to take up an item from the regular agenda at a work session. Ms. Taylor observed that if an item was controversial, taking it up at the work session would save little time during the regular meeting. Council Assignments/Communication with Staff City Manager Taylor asked councilors to report on their communications with staff and responses to council assignments within and outside of established protocols and guidelines. Ms. Bettman said she had seen no improvement from a time and information perspective; responses were delayed and too general in nature. She said that responses often did not reflect the intent of the council's assignment and required that the request for a response be resubmitted. Mr. Kelly said he had seen some improvement and had taken the initiative to clarify a council assignment to an executive when the summary was not reflective of council intent. He said that email communications were helpful, but it was difficult to clarify a council assignment with respect to an item when the executive of a department was always listed as the lead on agenda item summaries (ALS) instead of the staff person responsible for preparing the AlS. Mr. Pap~ agreed that he would prefer to have the staff person preparing the AIS listed as the lead. Ms. Solomon expressed concern with comments about the quality of information provided by staff and suggested that perhaps councilors were not always as articulate as possible in their requests. She said she was generally pleased with the quality of responses she had received from staff. Mr. Meisner cautioned against structuring communications between the council and staff that exceptions were not identified or allowed. MINUTES--Eugene City Council September 8, 2004 Page 10 Process Session